7 ms·
Costco is building out an ad business using its shoppers' data
- foobarian 2y agoAs long as they don't change their croissant recipe again, they can have all my data and I will not skip their ads. :-)
- darby_nine 2y agoLeave it to capitalism to drive people away from capitalism
- teej 2y agoThe general consumer does not care about this at all. If Costco passes this revenue down to consumers as savings, it will only drive more purchases.
- darby_nine 2y ago> The general consumer does not care about this at all. The general consumer will note that Costco wants their money.
- llamaimperative 2y agoWhat. No one is under the illusion that Costco is a charity.
- darby_nine 2y agoputting aside the heinous concept of a "charity" as their existence enables just this sort of parasitic behavior, the faith that people do not expect Costco to reflect their best interests or work in our collective favor is exactly why I think people will inevitably turn their back on Costco.
- janalsncm 2y agoI don’t think that’s the case. People do care if they find out, which is the reason these things are usually some combination of buried in legalese, opt out (rather than opt in) unclear that you can opt out of or not easy to opt out of. Edit: For example, in order to opt out without a membership you need to provide your street address. > If Costco passes this revenue down to consumers If they explicitly offered to pay people cash to track them, uptake would be nowhere near 100%. And this isn’t even as good as that, since as you say the payment would only be in the form of coupons which may or may not materialize.
- m463 2y agoreally? I care. actually most people DO care, but businesses purposefully have added enough friction so that the common person gives up.
- webdoodle 2y agoI've had a Costco membership for over 20 years. I'll be letting it expire when my yearly renewal runs out. My privacy is worth more than the insignificant discounts they provide anymore. I hope I'm the first of many that leave.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoI don't disagree with your actions, but make no mistake: you won't be the first of many. Unfortunately the market has shown us again and again that people a) don't look deeply into the business model and mostly care about price, and b) even if they did bother to look into it they don't value privacy. I wish it were otherwise, but sadly it just isn't.
- webdoodle 2y agoYou can try to manage perception as much as you like, but the facts are: Many people value there privacy, and will dump companies that abuse the privilege of purchasing products from them.
- x0x0 2y agofwiw, the most beneficial way of doing this for Costco is also relatively private. That is, companies tell Costco who they want to target and then costco shows the ads on their behalf. This maximizes value for Costco because advertisers have no alternative to paying Costco each and every time they want to show an ad. It also mostly prevents data exfiltration.
- drpossum 2y agoPeople can market $1.50 hot dogs to me forever
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/costco-founder-kill-hotdogs/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/costco-founder-kill-hotdog... > The founder of Costco told a CEO who wanted to raise the prices on Costco's hot dogs: "If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out."
- bigstrat2003 2y agoNot only are the hot dogs cheap as hell, they're honestly not that bad. It's not a gourmet hot dog or anything, but despite being basic they're pretty decent quality.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoYeah, they're still a hot dog, but they're somehow better than that mainstream Oscar Meyer crap.
- metadat 2y agoYes, they're delicious. The burps afterwards are pretty gross, though, haha. But I haven't found a hot dog that has less gross burps. It's the cost of doing business, especially at Costco. Except those apple chicken dog things, but they are not a proper hotdog.
- monksy 2y agoThis is a disappointing and shady thing. You're getting a value loss now from your membership. Previously you had a membership that allowed you to use, and buy from the club. Now your behavioral data is being used to sell it to 3rd parties to remarket to you.
- blinded 2y agoI have their CC shop there every now and again. Don't most stores either do this themselves or sell the data to bigger data brokers? Not saying its not an evil practice in general, but their actions don't seem to be an outlier?
- smeej 2y agoJust about everyone does, and has for the decade since store "rewards" cards became ubiquitous. I am stupefied to find out Costco is this late to this party. I don't even like the party, but it makes me worry about their leadership's awareness of...the entire world? Without some principled reason not to have done this sooner, it's just an awfully big ball to have dropped.
- nucleogenesis 2y agoI’ve heard anecdotes about Costco’s leadership being principled, especially relative to what you’d expect from corporate execs. I may be misremembering but iirc during a call with investors they were asked why they hadn’t been raising prices like everyone else is and the response was basically “because we don’t need to, so we won’t screw people over just because we can”.
- mrguyorama 2y agoEh, they probably aren't that principled, but rather they are just very aware at what their brand is. Costco makes it's money on people thinking the big business loves them as they pay $40 for a bottle of turmeric pills, while the gallon jug of turmeric costs $20. Meanwhile Costco's entire business is based around negotiating a large profit cut for name brands, and letting the consumer in on a tiny percentage of that profit cut. For most things, Costco isn't even that significant a discount anymore. There's the famous story of the Founder in a meeting supposedly telling the CEO "If you increase the price of the hot dog I will fucking kill you" If this actually happened, it's because the CEO knows that the $1.50 the hotdog costs is essential to the brand, and not because he has any belief about how much a hotdog should cost.
- 2y ago
- poikroequ 2y agoUnlike advertising in other places, where you're often getting something for free, sadly that's not the case in retail media. Consumers gain nothing from it. It doesn't make products any cheaper, actually makes products more expensive. Manufacturers are pitted against one another, and whomever pays the most gets the most prominent ad placement and higher placement in search results. Manufacturers pay for it, and pass that cost onto the consumer. Then search results are skewed in favor of the manufacturers who pay the most. The only winner is the retailer. Everyone else loses.
- LZ_Khan 2y agoReally? If I saw an ad for a product that is 20% more expensive than the organic result, I wouldn't click on it. Price is way more important than page placement for most consumers.
- 0x2a 2y agoOpt-out: https://www.costco.com/DNSMIView https://www.costco.com/DNSMIView https://simpleoptout.com/#costco https://simpleoptout.com/#costco
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- m463 2y agohttps://www.costco.com/DNSMIView https://www.costco.com/DNSMIView lol: This site is protected by reCAPTCHA.
- nickburns 2y agocan you elaborate on why that's concerning (or otherwise remarkable)?
- kotaKat 2y agoI'll take that over hCaptcha's abusive anti-user bullshit any day.
- 0x2a 2y agoWhat did hCaptcha do that was anti-user? reCAPTCHA is awful. This is my experience on a daily basis if I make the mistake of trying to use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_TsZB3zQFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_TsZB3zQFQ It's often only possible to complete with the accessibility feature or the Buster add-on.
- OptionOfT 2y agoArg, can't paste in my membership number in the confirm box. I wonder why this gets disabled? Is this a rule in some obscure security ruleset? And this is a brand-new form... So someone recently came up with it.
- twoWhlsGud 2y agoCompletely annoying. I can't imagine any legitimate reason for disabling paste, and I work in cyber security. (There are poorly thought out reasons for disabling paste such as trying to discourage bots, but those sorts of attacks can easily work around such "security" measures.)
- balderdash 2y agoI’m always confused by single retail businesses trying to sell data (completely different story for financial institutions, airlines, ISPs, etc). I’m not sure what I could but at Costco (excluding the pharmacy) that would be remotely relevant to somebody? What am I missing?
- xxpor 2y agoEvery online store with search has an extremely obvious 1st party ad opportunity: sponsored results It's great because it's also not affected by ATT, since it's all 1st party.
- balderdash 2y agoThat makes sense I was really thinking about in store purchase data
- dylan604 2y agoSometimes I wish I could think this innocently that I was unable to consider all of the nefarious ways people could use the data they have access to about you. Once you've peered in to just how accurate their inferences about can be, you loose one of your horcruxes.
- xxpor 2y agoOh, I'm sure they'll feed that into the ad tumbler too, don't get me wrong ;)
- tmpz22 2y agoHow big is your household? How does your discretionary spending vary over time? Did you just start buying diapers for the first time? I think there's a lot of labeling that could happen from the data, and thats what advertisers want more of right?
- balderdash 2y agoI guess, but I feel like Costco is not a sole source shopping experience but rather a supplemental one. I try and buy my gas there since it’s definitely cheaper, I do t think you could infer a great deal from my driving habits by my purchase history
- the_panopticon 2y agoWeaponizing data for ads and https://nypost.com/2024/06/06/business/costco-to-stop-selling-books-in-surprise-blow-to-publishers/ https://nypost.com/2024/06/06/business/costco-to-stop-sellin.... Feels about right for our post modern world.
- paulddraper 2y ago[flagged]
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoWhen you learn about metaphors it's going to blow your mind.
- paulddraper 2y ago> blow your mind. Weaponized education, as it were
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoIn the case of the article you linked, why aren't they getting palletized bundles of books from the publishers or leaving them in shipping boxes?
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoEverything comes to Costco stores in pallets, they don't do shipping boxes. With the exception of certain times (e.g. Christmas) or certain books (e.g. Spare), they don't sell enough of any given book to have a pallet in the store for that book. Mixing items/books on a pallet is a dumb idea. With single product pallets, you replace the pallet once its empty with another pallet. If you have two items in a pallet with one sold out and another barely sold any, what do you do?
- caseyy 2y agoAnd why not? Consumers are all but asking them to take it. You can't reward bad behavior with money and expect it to end.
- idle_zealot 2y agoCorrect. But you also can't expect an unaffiliated group of people to each individually decide to inconvenience or disadvantage themselves in order to punish bad behavior. The customers are the victims of an enormous power and organization imbalance here. If only there were some means by which the people could could all get together and decide on rules that benefitted them.
- caseyy 2y ago> If only there were some means by which the people could all get together and decide on rules that benefitted them. That's not been very effective in tech recently, has it? People have control over whether they enable the surveillance capitalism grift when they are used as means to an end. They can make this business model proliferate much less, so that much fewer companies are built around it, and other business decisions are relatively more profitable. We can all not use apps that track us, clear our cookies automatically when the browser closes, use E2E encryption in communications, and so on. And yes, many people can also not shop at Costco. And many will make that choice, but not most. You know, society has always managed to enforce the social order without the need for government — to decide together what is acceptable and what crosses boundaries. For at least tens of thousands of years as pre-chieftain egalitarian communities, and ever since. Culture exists as a concept, people can develop a privacy-conscious culture and in some regions of the world, it exists more than in others. Government as a concept is more recent. Big micromanaging government, even more recent. You just need to not be lazy and do the work, not expect that someone else will come and solve all the problems for you. Of course, people have become quite complacent these days. They don't set boundaries if it's more convenient for them in the moment. But culture is more effective than government in dictating what is right and wrong, except for autocracies. Some have been very effective in imposing a social order. But I don't think we need to go there. People can self-manage. The question if whether people want to self-manage or if they prefer the consequences of not doing so.
- tomrod 2y agoWhat a bummer. They were one of the good crews.
- sea-gold 2y agoFor those interested in the history of Costco, there is a great Acquired podcast episode[1]. [1] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco
- takinola 2y agoIf you are a fan of the business side of companies, I highly recommend The Acquired podcast. They go deep into the history of (mostly tech) companies and analyze the strategic choices made along the way. If for nothing else, the enthusiasm the hosts bring to the discussion is infectious.
- al_borland 2y agoI don’t understand this move. From what I understand, Costco doesn’t make much on sales, they make their money on the membership fees, which they get no matter what. Why do they need to manipulate customers to buy more stuff?
- buggeryorkshire 2y agoI love Costco here in the UK, but they don't do tech. AFAICT their Android app is just an awfully implemented webview, I can't change the email address associated with the account, they can't link purchases made with my card in-store to those on the website, the list goes on.
- speedylight 2y agoWell they’ll first need a new app that’s not crappy at best!
- TradingPlaces 2y agoIs this “taking care of members?” https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/829 https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/answer_view/a...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]